


Starved

by Yourking



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Black Paladin Allura, Black Paladin Keith, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Eye Contact, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Keith (Voltron), Keith and Shiro are Siblings, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, M/M, Minor Allura/Shiro (Voltron), Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, My First Work in This Fandom, Rude - Freeform, This is ridiculous, Touch-Starved, and he is a big brother at keith, anyway, apparently also not a tag but okay fine, assumed straightness, blue loves lance, broganes, but for like five minutes, but its cool they find him, but its cool they talk through it and become besties, but no thats not a tag, garrison dude is an asshole but doesnt make an appearance, hair petting, i have like five saved to my phone im debating posting, i meant like causal physical contact, i need to stop, it's just kind of implied, its a galra thing shh, keith cant lie for shit, keith purrs, pidge is so done, shiro goes missing, slight angst, sort of, sorta - Freeform, the lions are picky, um, why is noncon haircuts a tag but casual touching isnt, why is that a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 06:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9981071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yourking/pseuds/Yourking
Summary: Shiro goes missing and Keith gets upset and Lance hears him yelling so they talk things through and become bros and assume the other one is straight, lions are picky about who flies them, Keith makes people listen to Lance for once, Shiro is found and gives Keith shit because hes a big brother, Pidge and Shiro wonder if Lance and Keith are dating, and everyone ends up happy yay.Don't judge me okay.





	

"I want you to lead Voltron." 

The words had been ringing in Keith's ears ever since they discovered Shiro's lion was empty. He didn't know what to do and Shiro wasn't even here to talk to because he had gone and disappeared on Keith again even after he'd promised he wouldn't. 

He was trying really hard not to be mad at older brother. It wasn't working. 

Keith kicked the wall under his bed as hard as he could, cursing when it did more damage to his foot than the wall. 

"Goddamnit Shiro! Why the fuck would you go and say that and then just fucking leave me again! Why does this keep happening to me?! What the fuck am I supposed to do?! Lead Voltron- yeah I bet that'll go really fucking well! Great fucking plan Shiro!" 

Predictably, the empty room didn't answer. 

He threw himself onto his back in the middle of the bed. "Why do you keep leaving me?" He said to himself, suddenly quiet. "How am I supposed to lead them when they don't even like me?" 

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. "Keith? Is that you? I mean of course it's you, it is your room, but are you okay? I heard some thumping and yelling." 

Lance. Just who Keith wanted to see most. Great. 

"Please just go away." He said, loud enough Lance could hear it through the door. 

The door slid open. 

"Dude- what the fuck I said-" Keith sputtered angrily, sitting up to glare at the open doorway. 

Lance looked surprised, one hand still up where it had been resting on the door. "I didn't- the door- I swear I didn't do anything, it opened by itself!" 

Keith flopped back to his previous position on the bed. "Great. Not even the door listens to me. I'll be a great leader." He muttered under his breath. 

"I know you said you were fine and to go away and all and we don't really get along and- anyway do you want to like.. talk about it? Everyone is pretty upset by Shiro- you know.. but you seem to be taking it the hardest so if you want to talk.." 

"Duh. He's my brother. And no. Not with you." Keith refrained from rolling his eyes. 

"Okay well.. do you want me to get someone else? I'm pretty sure you're supposed to talk about these things. Who do you usually talk to?" Lance asked. Keith noticed he was fidgeting a bit. 

"Shiro. I usually talk to Shiro, but that's not really an option now is it?" 

"Oh. Yeah, no. Not really." Lance was still standing in the open doorway. 

Keith sighed. "If you aren't going to leave me alone can you at least move so the door can shut?" 

"Oh! Yeah, right." Lance took a couple steps into the room, the door sliding shut immediately behind him. 

They were both silent awhile before Keith finally broke. "This is so stupid." 

"What?" Lance looked up from his hands, surprised Keith was actually talking to him. 

"It's stupid." Keith sat up, moving to where he could lean against the wall. "Why would he tell me to lead? I'm probably the least suited to lead out of anyone in this castle. I'm pretty sure the goo machine would do a better job. Not even the door listens to me and you hate me." He thumped his head back against the wall. 

"I don't." Lance said quietly, voice barely above a whisper. "Not really. I'm not sure I ever did." 

Now it was Keith's turn to look surprised. "You don't?" 

Lance walked over, sitting on the bed next to Keith, about a foot and a half between them. "How can I? I mean I wanted to, you know the teachers back at the garrison always used to compare us? Tell me I was crap and only got in because you got kicked out. So I kind of got stuck in that rivalry. I kind of blamed you but, it's not really your fault is it?" 

"That's super shitty of them." Keith's voice was a little louder now with surprise. 

"Yeah, I guess it was." Lance said quietly, leaning back. 

"No." Keith sat up and turned towards him, eyes fierce suddenly. "Not 'I guess'. It was. It was shitty of them. Yes you filled the space when I left but you weren't just a replacement for me, you're your own person. I was the best in that class and they tried to make you feel bad for not being as good as me? And you know what? They were wrong. I bet if they could see you now you'd be better than them and every single person in that class." 

Keith paused to breathe, "and you're a lot better than me at a lot of things so if you're going to go comparing us yourself take those into account too. You're good with people and I'm utter crap with them. You understand when Hunk and Pidge talk engineering better than anyone on this ship. You keep them from forgetting we're not just warriors, you keep us laughing. And besides all that I can't aim a rifle for shit." They both laughed a little at the last one. 

"Don't do that anymore, okay?" Keith said, so quietly Lance barely heard him. 

"Yeah okay. I won't." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

After that something had clearly changed between them, everyone on the ship could see it. 

They still had arguments, but they were lighter than before, and usually ended in laughing rather than someone throwing their arms up and storming out like before. 

Instead of sitting as far from Lance as he could, like he had before, Keith started sitting right up next to him. Close enough that Lance realized something. 

Keith was touch starved.

Lance figured before Shiro disappeared Keith had gotten enough half hugs, hair scrubs, or whatever from him that it was fine, but now those were gone and Keith needed them more than ever. So Lance decided he'd do it. 

It was little things at first, high-fiving Keith for dumb little things, nudging him during conversations, throwing a friendly arm over his shoulder while they were walking like he had with Hunk and Pidge dozens of times before. Keith complained a little, but it was half hearted at best and he never did anything about it. So Lance went for the big guns. 

He started sprawling across Keith's lap for attention when he was bored, again something he did with Hunk and Pidge all the time. Keith ignored him, but Lance caught a hint of a smile when he went back to what he was doing. 

One day he walked into a lounge room to find Keith laying sprawled out on a couch so Lance walked over, pulled up Keith's shoulders up enough that he could put his thighs under Keith's head, and lowered him back down. 

"What are you doing?" Keith sounded a little annoyed, but to tired to actually do anything about it. 

Lance shushed him and started carding his fingers through Keith's hair and lightly tracing his fingertips across his scalp. This was actually something he'd thought of doing with Keith a lot. He'd wondered perhaps a few to many times what it would feel like between his fingers, if it would be as soft as it looked. It was. 

Keith quickly melted into the attention, a quiet pleased sound coming from the back of his throat as he relaxed, eyes fluttering closed. Lance barely held back a laugh when Keith started purring. 

"Shut up." Keith muttered, feeling Lance's silent laughter. 

After a couple minutes quietly playing with Keith's hair and listening to his purring fade as he fell asleep Lance started singing. His mom had sung him this same song when he was little, a gentle Spanish piece about love, Lance blushed a little when he realized but kept going until the end. 

After a while Lance fell asleep too, fingers still in Keith's soft black locks. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Red didn't hate Lance, and she made sure Keith knew it, she just definitely did not want him to pilot her. Or Allura. Or Coran. Or anyone else on the ship for that matter. She refused to let anyone in but Keith and didn't listen when he practically begged her to, simply pointing out that he didn't really want them to either. 

Blue let Allura in once, but spent the entire time grumbling about it to Lance and did the bare minimum of effort, not allowing Allura to go half the speed Lance could get with her, slow on every order. 

Black let Keith pilot her, but he hated it. She couldn't read him the same way Red could, and would sometimes flat out refuse Keith if she thought she had a better plan. 

All in all, it wasn't working. 

And so, to almost everyone's displeasure, they had to call a team meeting. Five minutes in they still hadn't agreed to a plan. 

"Well Coran could- no that won't work." 

"Okay what if-" 

"Guys I think there's an obvious answer here." 

"Alright but how about-" 

Lance sunk back into his seat, huffing in annoyance when he was ignored. The answer was just so obvious and yet no one was taking him seriously. He glanced to his side for a second to find Keith studying him. 

"Guys. Listen." Keith spoke up, and edge of irritation in his voice. Everyone looked at him. He wondered for a second at that, it was so weird to him that they listened to him but were ignoring Lance. "I want to hear Lance's plan and you're all talking over him when you don't have one yourself." 

They all looked like they wanted to say something, but one by one got this kind of guilty look and stayed silent. 

Lance stared at Keith, wide eyed like it was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen. It really wasn't, but to Lance it was definitely close. 

Keith gave him a few seconds before speaking again. "Lance?" He prompted gently. 

Lance felt something stir in his chest at Keith, so happy that he stood up for him, that he thought Lance was something to be treated nicely when he was rarely gentle with anything. 

He thought for a second he might know what that feeling was, but he quickly shoved that thought down as soon as it showed itself. 

"Right. So Red won't let anyone in and Blue doesn't want anyone in either so-" 

"She let me in!" Allura spoke up quickly. 

Lance winced a little. "Allura, she was at half speed and complained to me the whole five minutes you were in her. She asked me for confirmation before doing anything you said. That's not going to work in any real situation." 

She paused a moment to look offended. "Did she really?" 

"Yeah, sorry. So like I said, Keith and I are kind of stuck. But I think that there's an obvious answer. Allura is already basically our leader right? She's good at making tough decisions, we're all willing to follow her right?" Lance paused, waiting for the others to agree. 

"So I think we should all stay where we are and have Allura pilot the black lion." He turned to Keith now, "I know Shiro wanted you to lead but if it's okay by you I think Allura should." 

"Of course it is." Keith gave him a little smile. They looked at each other for a few seconds, both silent and smiling. 

"That's actually a pretty good plan. Why didn't any of us think of that?" Pidge asked, interrupting their moment. 

"We were all trying to follow Shiro still." Hunk said. They were all quiet then. 

"Well," Allura said after a while, breaking them from their thoughts as she stood up. "I'm going to go try and convince the Black lion to let me in." She did a little wave over her shoulder as she left, the boots of her flight suit quieter than the click of her usual shoes on the metal floor. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

And so it went for weeks before they finally found Shiro. Lance and Keith spent more and more time together, until people started referring to them like they were one person. 'Have you seen LanceandKeith?' 'Can you go get LanceandKeith for dinner?' The two seemed to be together more often than not and were always in each other's space to the point where Pidge started to wonder if they were secretly dating. The black lion liked Allura all right, although sometimes the lion would tell her something and she'd blush almost instantly and refuse to tell anyone what it said. 

When they did find Shiro everyone was thrilled, excited things would finally go back to normal. And they did for the most part. Things were happier, all the lions had their proper paladin, etc. Lance and Keith still spent all their free time together. 

At first it wasn't that obvious to Shiro. Everyone seemed to want to be around him all the time for the first week, so it wasn't weird Lance and Keith were almost always in the same room, since everyone else was in it too. Then things calmed back down for real and he started to notice they didn't really fight anymore, that they did a lot of casual touching. So he thought maybe they were just so happy he was back they didn't feel like fighting. It was a weird thought, but not impossible. 

Then he walked in on them both asleep on the couch. Lance was in an almost sitting position and Keith was practically in his lap, arms wrapped around his waist and face against his stomach. 

Later he asked Pidge if they had started dating while he left and she threw up her arms and thanked him before walking out. That was definitely weird and he figured her reaction was probably supposed to be a no. 

He decided he would bite the bullet and ask Keith about it. 

He was glad Keith was bonding with his teammate and getting more human touch than he used to, but he really wanted to know what was going on. 

It was easier said then done. The two were always together and he didn't want to make it obvious to Lance he was trying to talk to Keith without him there. 

He quickly gave up. "Hey Keith wanna come with me a minute?" Keith sat up a little from where he was sitting on the couch, feet resting on Lance's legs. 

"What's up?" He tilted his head a little to the side and furrowed his brows just a little. 

"Just come to the training room with me, please? It's been a while." Shiro couldn't think of an actual excuse but figured just asking again would be good enough. 

It was weird seeing Keith glance at Lance before moving, almost like he was asking if it was okay with Lance. Lance just pushed his feet off and told him to go get his brotherly bonding time in. Keith chuckled a little at that and got up, tapping Lance's knee once as he walked past him to Shiro. 

He ignored Keith's clear curiosity and led the way to the training room, closing the door and looking around to make sure they were alone before turning to Keith again. 

"Are you two dating?" Shiro asked him suddenly. He'd been planning on going for subtle but said a mental fuck it as soon as he entered the room. 

Keith turned bright red and stared at Shiro, "what?" 

"I said-" 

"No- I heard you- just, why would you-?" 

Shiro smiled a little, he couldn't help it, being Keith's older brother he had to admit it was kind of fun to see him embarrassed. "You guys are all over each other all the time and I know you like boys, so I was just wondering." He shrugged a little, trying to seek casual about it. 

"We're not- I don't- Lance isn't even into guys Shiro!" Keith spluttered a bit, his face seemed to be getting even redder. 

"Oh so you're into him then?" Shiro smirked a little. 

"What? No! I mean I- No. I'm not into Lance." Keith broke eye contact and started tugging on a chunk of hair. 

Shiro's smirk got bigger. "You're an awful liar Keith. Wanna spar while we're here? Your boyfriend can wait a few more minutes." 

"He's not my boyfriend and I'm not a bad liar." Keith grumbled, just loud enough Shiro could hear him. He picked up a practice sword since his bayard wasn't in his pocket. 

"Where's your bayard?" 

Keith paused a second to remember where he'd put it before realizing he left it in Lance's room this morning after a sleepover. He tried unsuccessfully to keep from blushing again. "Its- uh- Nowhere." 

"Your bayard is nowhere?" 

"Yes. I mean no. It's... in my room." Keith lied, knowing if Shiro knew where it really was the teasing would get worse. And how weird was it that he had gone all day without even thinking about where his bayard was. 

"Do you want to go get it?" Shiro asked. 

"No, it's fine, I should practice with a normal sword anyway, in case I don't have it in a fight, since the grip is different." Keith thought that was a pretty good lie, and actually now that he said it that was a good point. He would have to start doing that more often. 

Shiro, being the older brother he was, saw right through it immediately. "You can't get it because it's in Lance's room and the door won't let you in while he's not there." 

"I can't get it because it's in Lance's room and the door won't let me in while he's not there." Keith confirmed, crossing his arms and trying not to pout. It was seriously unfair that he couldn't even lie to Shiro anymore. 

Shiro just laughed, the jerk, white hair shaking with him. "Alright let's do this." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Did you have fun bonding?" Keith was trying to ring the water out of his hair when the door to his room slid open. Nowadays as long as they were in there and weren't doing anything private the doors to their rooms always seemed to open for each other. 

"Huh? Oh yeah. We talked a little and then sparred. For a while. I actually just got out of the shower like two minutes ago so nice timing." He dropped the towel into a basket and sat down next to Lance where he had already spread himself across Keith's bed, his back touching Lance's left leg lightly. He leaned back into it a little more, trusting Lance to be able to take it. 

"Oh yeah? You guys secretly talking shit about the rest of us?" Lance grinned, poking Keith's side. 

"Nah. He actually wanted to know if we were dating." Keith said it without thinking, expecting a little laugh from Lance. "I told him you weren't into guys." 

"Why? You trying to ruin my chances with your brother?" 

Keith looked at him, confused. "What are you talking about?" 

Lance stared back at him for a second before he realized. "Oh, you think-" he started laughing. 

"Lance?" Keith was looking more confused by the second. 

"Keith, I'm definitely not straight." Lance stopped laughing but was still looking at him like he'd said something hilarious. 

Keith felt a little like Lance had just short circuited his brain. "But you always flirt with girls?" 

"Well yeah. I'm pan." Lance raised a brow at him. 

"Then why don't you flirt with guys?" 

"What can I say, I'm picky." 

That got a laugh from Keith. "What do you mean you're picky, you've hit on just about every pretty kind of girlish looking alien since we left earth." 

"Okay well I'm picky when it comes to guys. Plus I don't really want to get punched, you know?" 

That made sense, but Keith still felt a little like he'd spent years thinking two plus two was three and Lance had just told him that actually it was four all along. He was quiet for a minute, thinking. 

"Your brother asked if you were dating me and you said we weren't because I was straight." Suddenly Lance looked like he was the one who'd gotten the news about two plus two. 

"Uh- yes? I mean I guess I was wrong but-" 

"You didn't say it was because you weren't into guys." 

"No, I came out to him years ago." 

"So you're..." 

"Gay? Yeah, I thought it was obvious?" 

"No, it was definitely not." Lance breathed the words more than he said, a little laugh shaking through the word 'definitely'.

Keith let out a little, "oh" and they were both quiet, taking in the news. 

"Wait are you really into my brother?" 

"Well. Shiro is pretty hot." Lance seemed to think about it for a second, ignoring Keith's nose crinkle. "And he's strong too. He could definitely throw me over his shoulder or push me against a-" 

Keith cut him off with a pained choking sound. "Oh god, please stop! I'm sorry I asked!" 

Lance laughed a little at his friend. "Hey it's cool dude. He's to old for me anyway. Plus he's almost definitely straight and in love with Allura." 

"That's true." Keith hummed a little, thankful lance had stopped talking about his brother like that because he really didn't need those images in his head. 

"You know, you could've just told him you weren't into me." Lance said it slowly as he sat up on the bed and suddenly he was way to close and Keith felt a little like he couldn't breathe properly. 

"I- well yeah but-" he paused a second and wondered when his mouth had gotten so dry, licking his lips quickly, with Lance this close it was obvious the way his eyes flicked down to when he did. Something clicked in Keith's head. Oh. He tried it again. Lance was looking a bit more flushed but neither of them was pulling back, noses not even six inches apart. 

The heat of Lance so close combined with the way his heart had picked up and how the smell of Lance was making his head swim had him suddenly feeling more impulsive then ever. He decided to go for it. 

"He always knows when I'm lying." Keith breathed into the space between them. 

Lance's eyes went wide at the confession. "Keith- can I?" 

Keith leaned in instead of answering.


End file.
